The running order is the script
- Read the scene titles on their own, with nothing else. If they do not tell the story in order, no amount of animation will rescue it
- One argument per film. A working order: here is the promise, here is what you get today, here is the thing you add, here is it working, here is the difference, here is what it saves
- Name the product where the value lands, not as a beat of its own. A scene that only says the name is a scene the viewer waits through
- Show the anti-example concretely. A violet gradient, capitals in a mono font at one size, emoji standing in for icons and a chart placeholder makes the argument faster than any adjective
- Cut anything that explains the mechanism. Viewers want the result
Pace
- Pick the tempo first, then make every scene a whole number of beats. At 120 BPM and 60fps that is a multiple of 30 frames, so cuts land on the beat for free
- Give a scene enough frames to be read once, plus a beat of stillness. Around 4 to 5 seconds carries a title and one idea
- Vary it. Several equal-length scenes in a row read as a slideshow. A short scene after two long ones lands like a punchline
Sound
- Generate the track from the composition rather than alongside it. A script that reads the scene lengths back out of the running order keeps every swell on a cut when a scene changes length
- Synthesise it if you can. Nothing to license, and it can be regenerated whenever the edit moves
- Normalise the render. A first pass peaked at -14.5 dB and was inaudible under the picture
- Music carries the pace, so if the film feels slow the fix is usually the edit, not the tempo